


I Should've Worshipped Her Sooner

by alisonkay



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 08:34:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2615258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alisonkay/pseuds/alisonkay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You’re perfect," Santanico muses, her arm moving downwards, fingers deftly tracing the shell of Kate’s ear, along her jaw, moving more hair away from her neck. "I was perfect once. I was you, once."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Should've Worshipped Her Sooner

Kate’s looking up from under her eyelashes, soft brown swaths of hair falling into her line of vision from where she’d ineffectually tucked them behind her ears. The (much) older woman smiles at her and a fine pink blush blooms over pale skin as Kate’s gaze skitters downwards, her teeth grabbing at her lower lip in some misguided attempt at suppressing the old preacher’s daughter shame. 

"Kate."

It’s like a prayer, or some sort of blessing. An ages-old culebra, _literal_ Queen of the Damned, and she’s saying a seventeen-year-old girl’s name like it’s holding all the freedom she ever could have wanted. 

"Yes?" 

There’s almost a stutter in the word, a hitch at the start, a lingering note at the end. Kate’s lost all ability to talk coherently in the span of a few perfumed minutes. She blames the heat, the way the room is too small, the fact that she hasn’t eaten since the morning—anything, really, except the pit of shameful desire in her stomach that won’t seem to burn off. 

"Come here," The words extend towards Kate along with one delicately sinewed arm, the fine bones of Santanico’s hand twining under dark skin, one finger curling deliberately into her fist in an impossibly seductive way.

Kate wants to go to her—god, but does she want to go to her. She wants to crawl forward on hands and knees, she wants to tuck herself into the arms of the awesome woman who’s deemed her worthy enough to even grace with her notice, and she wants to praise the goddess that she knows Santanico to be—nevermind her old, tired faith.

She almost does it, too. She’s half-way towards crouching down when something breaks in the back of her mind, a foot stepping on a twig, the sudden resonance of breakage in an otherwise silent wood. Something here is not as it should be. 

But then—Santanico. Dark eyes and warm skin, matte lips such a dark, dark red, and Kate’s mind is soothed all over again.

Maybe it’s because she’s special—Kate, in all her average glory—or maybe it’s because she’s everything Santanico used to be: innocent, young, and just a hint naive. The kind of naive that sees the best in people, and ends up getting others hurt. It doesn’t matter much _why_ , because all she knows is _what_. 

_What_ Kate is, is Santanico’s. 

The room is draped in fabric, all dyed deep reds and bright pinks, a glittery gold fabric peeking out here and there. The floor is ancient stone, hard and uninviting, but that doesn’t stop Kate. She makes her way towards her new altar, a bed in the centre of the room; more bright red fabric. Cushions and pillows, blankets and sheets, and a woman who’s been alive as long as Kate has ten times over and then some. 

"Kate."

The word burns in the air, sends heat coursing through the cold stone at the girl’s feet. She stumbles over herself, or the warmth, or maybe over the uneven floor because she can’t take her eyes off of her end goal and walking really requires more attention than she’s got to give.

"I’m here," Kate gasps as she closes the too-large gap between them, falling to the floor at the edge of the bed. The sound of knees on stone is painful in her ears, and her teeth clatter at the impact, but these are all peripheral notions of things that just don’t matter.

Santanico Pandemonium sits atop the bed, the altar, the place where Kate will give herself to a true goddess in ecstasy. Her lips part, pull back into a smirk that turns Kate’s nerves into molten sensation, and for a brief, alarming moment Kate thinks she can see teeth elongating, curving, preparing—but then the warmth is there again and she hopes she _has_ seen those teeth, that they’ll rip into her own throat, entice the blood from her veins and pull every bit of herself into Santanico—she wants to be as close to the other woman as she can get.

"Come closer, Kate. Join me here, where it’s soft," The Culebra is still reaching for Kate with one hand, the other tracing some divine pattern into the red satin next to her body, a space she clearly wants Kate to occupy. 

The girl is happy to oblige her mistress, Kate’s eyes lighting up like it’s Christmas, the best present she’s ever received. Her eyes prick and actual tears begin to form, because all of this is so overwhelming and so perfect and so mesmerizing, but she pushes it all down because tears are for people who are sad, and she wouldn’t want Santanico to get the wrong idea.

Kate wipes her hands on the tops of her thighs, palms warm against the jean fabric, before she pulls herself onto the bed, slinking up like a cat onto a window sill, ready to lap up some sunlight. 

"Good girl," Santanico whispers, her voice velvet. Kate nearly purrs.

The hand that has been reaching for Kate finally makes contact, pushes fine strands of soft hair behind Kate’s ear. The contact nearly kills the teen girl, and she’s frozen for a moment, struck with more sensation and feeling than she thought she was capable of. The moment passes, and Kate melts into the touch, a deep, content sigh rushing passed her lips.

"You’re perfect," Santanico muses, her arm moving downwards, fingers deftly tracing the shell of Kate’s ear, along her jaw, moving more hair away from her neck. "I was perfect once. I was you, once."

Kate can’t understand—her mind is poisoned with the perfection of the moment, the fulfilled desires, the ones still yet to be fulfilled. Her life has been leading up to this, and none of it was enough to prepare her for the moment she is suspended in, Santanico, her new religion, so close she is literally being touched by divinity.

A sharp pinch, the absolute transcendentally erotic pull of sensation at her neck, sweeter oblivion than Kate’s ever known. She’s gone to heaven.

Except—something happens. Something changes, and awareness is edging back into Kate’s flustered mind and—she can hear gunshots. She knows exactly what she’s hearing in that moment, and confusion wracks over her. Seth and Richie Gecko are standing at the other end of the room, guns pointed at her and her goddess, yelling things she can’t or won’t understand, and Santanico’s teeth are no longer at her neck, and the loss of that connection is filling her belly with stones of dread.

"You fucking snake bitch! Get away from her!" 

The words are starting to take shape in her head, but they still don’t make sense. Santanico’s face has changed, smoothly tanned skin shifting into scaled ridges, and Kate only wants to reach out and touch her all the more. As she watches the beautiful reptilian face pull back into a snarl, Santanico’s whole head snaps back at unnatural speed, her shoulders slumping as her whole body falls back onto the bed. 

Kate stares for a moment, confused. The blood from Santanico’s forehead spreads, the puddle nearly invisible on the red sheets. Kate realizes belatedly that one of the Gecko brothers has shot Santanico and that someone is making horrible screaming sounds, very loudly. Realization hits a second later that it’s coming from her own throat.

-

It’s three days later that Kate fully understands what has happened. She remembers it all like a dream. Everything up until the point Santanico was shot. It seems she became hysterical at that point, fighting the Geckos tooth and nail even as they forced their rescue on her. Mostly, she wishes they hadn’t.

It was another culebra temple the trio had entered. They should have planned for the possibility the place would fuck with their heads, get them lost in the dark tunnels, separate them. But they hadn’t planned for that, and so Kate had ended up in Santanico’s chambers all alone and without her weapons. And, apparently, susceptible to whatever mental mojo the vampire bitch could pull.

Kate feels mostly empty now. She should be embarrassed or angry, she should want revenge. She simply doesn’t.

"Kate?" Seth is on the other side of the motel’s bathroom door, a knuckle rapping against the wood steadily. "You okay in there? It’s been an hour."

His words surprise Kate, she hadn’t realized more than a moment had passed with her sitting in the bathtub, water brimming around the edges. But then she notices she’s shivering because the water has turned cold—or maybe it’s because her fingers have been stroking the two small scabs on the side of her neck without her consciously telling them to do so.

"Kate?" 

The knocking intensifies and Kate realizes once again, she’s letting time lapse around her.

"I’m here," She replies finally. 

"Are you okay?"

"I’m…here," Kate says again, because she is very much not okay. How could she ever be okay? She’d felt—everything. For far too brief a time, she’d felt literally so amazing she’d—she hadn’t cared even a bit that she was dying. Being eaten alive by a reptilian succubus, and she’d been too high on whatever sway Santanico had over her to care.

Kate had forsaken her faith. She’d thrown God out the window for a woman with evil under her skin. And it….it had been worth it. Kate had been given heaven by the devil. How was that possible? She felt like an addict now, trying to walk away from a drug that had made her life perfect, just so she could live a life with the pain of knowing she’d never feel that way again.

"Seth?" 

"Yes?" He answers too quickly, too eagerly. 

"I think I want to die," Kate whispers, hardly talking to the man anymore, absorbed once more in her own world, thighs pulling close to her chest and head turning to rest a cheek on her upturned knees. 

Maybe one day she’ll work up enough emotion to blame the Geckos for bringing her to that temple, or even for saving her life. 

Maybe she’s too drained to ever feel again.

**Author's Note:**

> So, that happened. Sorry it got pretty dark. Let me know what you think with a review, even if it's just some guttural grunting noises expressed via a string of vowels.


End file.
